


Death's Assistant

by Uniasus



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Jack is weird, Minor Character Death, Souls, if jack wasn't narrating this the story would probably be angst but he just doesn't care, saint frost, slight body horror just don't think about Jack's toes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28222830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: When Death found Jack Frost, she couldn't remove his soul from his body and set him free. Instead, he's spent the past 300 years as her assistant. And then the Guardians find him.
Comments: 42
Kudos: 112





	1. Death Found Me Alive

**Author's Note:**

> I know I wanted to publish *something* before the end of the year, but dusting off this bunny was not what I expected. 
> 
> Loosely inspired by the lyric "may death find you alive" in the song Uma Thurman by Fall Out Boy and that old, fandom idea of Jack Frost as the saint of suicides that crops up now and again. For those of you who have read [Dark Moon, High Tide,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1356904/chapters/2832514) this fic will have some of the same elements, so if you made that cry I'm sorry for this one. However, the loose plot in my head will probably have you going "no no no oh sh*t" instead of "please I beg you let Jack be okay" at the end. 
> 
> Keep in mind though, that plot may not entirely happen. We'll see. I'm rather scatterbrained on this one.

When Death came to me, I was already dead. 

We were both rather surprised. Her, because she had expected to find a still body to pull a soul out of. Me, because after being pulled out of an iced-over pond Death told me I was dead.

Rather ironic, as our first meeting felt more like being born. My first memories are of the sound of cracking ice and then the sudden light of a full moon. Everything went from darkness to brightness so fast it had taken me a while to focus on Death leaning over me. 

The sharp pain in my chest helped. It shocked me, causing my back to arch, and I swore with pain. Death simply frowned at me. 

"You're dead. Your heart isn't beating and you're pale. I'm guessing you drowned in this pond. So why won't your soul leave your body?" 

"Um, sorry?" 

"Your soul. It won't leave your body." 

"They aren't supposed to do that anyway?" 

"They are when you're dead." 

I spent the rest of that night fending off a panic attack while Death poked and prodded at me, mumbling about this and that trying to figure out just what I was. 

The answer? We still don't know. What we have figured out was that I had been human. I died, and something prevented Death from knowing I drowned. My body had laid in that pond for longer than it should have, we're guessing a month at least. 

Death calls me a walking corpse. Apparently, a soul stuck in a decaying body does strange things to the body. Death thinks my powers are the result of my soul having tried to deteriorate my body faster so it could escape. That subconsciously, I tried to control water to guide hungry fish or use ice to burst my cells. It didn't work the way my soul wanted it to; instead of helping my body decay, I gained control over water. 

When Death gave me that explanation early on in my 'life', I could tell it was a shaky one. Built on speculation and conjuncture, but we have no other theory as to how a dead boy turned into, well, me. 

We also don't know what prevented Death from finding my body for so long. While it's a puzzle we occasionally dwell on, we haven't thought much about it in the past 300 years. We're too preoccupied with our jobs.

* * *

Death is, well, Death is scary. Both the act and the person. I mean, sure, some deaths happen too quickly for a scream, but just the concept of it can be terrifying. And for those slow deaths, where you can actually see Death coming, well the Grim Reaper is often as terrifying as you believe death to be. 

Death's actually pretty sad about that. I'm the only one who has ever seen her true face. Everyone else sees a skeleton, monster, deformed man, an empty cloak, a rotting corpse, or some other imagined horror. 

She did the whole been there, done that thing with depression and is in that phrase you just shrug things off, but I can tell it still weighs on her. I help out where I can, making sure the dying see a friendly young face first and try to get them to fall into their last sleep with a smile on their face. This way, they don't scream and try to scramble away from Death.

I'm pretty good at it. But well, I do have centuries of practice. 

Tonight's one of those nights that break my non-beating heart. There are three kids huddled together in a Ukrainian town, the day after Christmas. The littlest one, a boy, has drooping eyelids as he snuggles into his big sister's arms. The sister has her eyes closed and that grim, defeated look on her face that intensifies as I get closer. She knows death is on its way to claim all three of them and my presence announces that it's tonight. 

She feels me, her eyes snapping open to reveal horror-filled brown eyes. I give her a tight smile and crouch down next to the oldest boy, the one looking up at the stars above trying to make out constellations through the street lights. 

"It's hard to see them from here, wanna get closer?" 

He jumps and turns to look at me, his sister's hand on his shoulder gripping tightly. Her action causes the little one to open his eyes all the way and look at me. 

"Who are you?" the stargazer asks. 

"Jack Frost," I answer and I can tell these children have heard something about me. The small one presses closer to the sister. 

"Have you come to take our souls, Jack Frost?" the girl asks. 

I shake my head. "I don't take souls, Death does that. Me, I just try to give you a happy last memory." 

"Can you give us a memory of a feast?" the older boy asks, eyes hopeful. 

"Sorry kid, but no. I can however show you a good look at the stars. Does that sound like fun?" 

He pursues his lips, not sure of the offer, but the sister nods. "Take us to a pretty place." 

"Hold on to me." The eldest two grab my sweatshirt while I pick the smallest one up in a one-armed hold. "Everyone got a good grip? Good, cuz here we go!" 

I swirl my wrist and staff, freezing water vapor into thin steps. From afar, it looks like I'm leaping on the wind but it's really just my control of water. Frozen lemonade, frozen invisible airstairs. I can do either.

I lead us to the top of the building they'd been huddling against. At three stories, it’s barely taller than the streetlights, but the stars are marginally better. All three kids look up, the older boy smiling. The sister and youngest child blink sleepily at the sight, still clinging to my sweatshirt. Even pressed against my chest, the little guy doesn't seem to notice the coldness I give off. Judging by their pale fingers, everything is probably just cold and colder to them at this point. 

I sit down, bring the three kids into the space between my outstretched legs, and point up at the stars. I name them softly, even as the children burrow into each other. The stargazer asks two questions before going quiet, all three of them blinking slowly at the starry sky. Their eyes close, their heartbeats slow down. Death appears on the edge of the roof, watching. She’s in a star-studded black dress tonight, thick wool navy cloak around her. As the kids die, she drifts closer. 

Seconds after each child breathes their last breath, she plunges her hands into their chest and pulls out their souls one by one. I can't see what is held in her fist, but when she opens her hand I imagine each soul drifting up to the sky. Souls are not for human eyes, Death said once, but I like to imagine souls look like lightning bugs.

Death's gaze trails the souls of the three kids, so I watch her watch them fade away. Then, like thousands of times before, she plunges her hand into my own chest to pull out my soul. It doesn’t work. Surprise surprise. 

“One day,” she says, “I’ll set you free, Jack.” 

Eventually, she’ll be able to pull out my soul. My body _is_ slowly decaying. I am gaunter now than 300 years ago. Four of my toes have fallen off, victims to frostbite. Whatever had been done to me to keep my body the way it is won't last forever. For now, I enjoy my second life, not that I remember the first. I have a friend, I have a purpose, and I travel the world. 

* * *

“Explain this to me again?” I ask as we stare at the pond I died in. 

“There’s a death pull.” 

“Uh-uh.” 

“Each death pull is different,” Death continues, “because each soul is different. But every time we come to this part of the world, there’s one here and it feels _exactly_ the same as it did three hundred years ago.” 

I nod. Nothing new. I followed her every time she felt that pull. Helped her look for a second body. Even let her push me back into the freezing water, thinking maybe the pull needed a hard reset. Nothing. But still, we come back here. Almost absentmindedly, Death tries to pull out my soul. It doesn’t work and by now the small tug on my heart that comes with the attempt is as common as the wind on my cheek. 

Whatever soul is calling to Death, it isn’t mine. After all, we were rarely more than a mile apart since she found me. The pond is a different soul. 

“Maybe the pond died?” I guess, leaning on my shepherd's crook. We assume it was mine before my death, based on where we found it, but I have no clue. Still, as I only have it and the clothes on my back, I am rather attached to the piece of wood. 

“Ponds don’t have souls.” 

“A fish?” 

“Nor do fish.” 

I shrug. We’ve had this conversation a lot, almost word for word in the past 300 years. We’ve long since run out of new ideas. 

Sighing, I look up at the moon. It's full, just like the night I’d been born-again, and for no reason other than silliness I wave. Some of the kids I helped spoke of a Man in the Moon, and while the idea sounds farfetched I’m not going to dismiss the idea. I turned into a folk tale, St. Jack Frost. Death has dozens of stories about her too. Maybe there is someone up there. 

For the sake of the pattern, I continue the conversation we have at least once a year. “Why does a potential trapped soul bother you? I have one and I don’t care.” 

“It’s my _job,_ " Death says. “Souls must move on. They’re supposed to. No one is meant to be here forever. A soul in a decaying body goes crazy. They don’t know what happened, they can’t control their form. They get twisted, turn malicious. They need to be freed to be happy. And if someone has been trapped in this pond for 300 years, they’re not going to pleasant.” 

She sighs, shoulders heaving, and brings up her hands to stroke her long black braid. “Trapped souls turn into evil spirits. Present company excluded.” 

Death tilts her head up, staring at the moon. “It’s always stronger on a full moon, for some reason.” 

I snap my attention to her. This is new information! “Yeah?” 

“Didn’t realize until recently,” she says, still looking up, “Always thought it was my memory since I found you on a full moon. But yes, I think so.” 

Death floats up to the high branches in a tree, linking her gloved fingers with mine to bring me with her. We sit on the top branch staring at the moon, swinging our legs and leaning on each other's shoulders. We’ll have to leave eventually, death always happens and so there are always souls to release, but sometimes it's nice to just sit and be.

Like always, when I’m still my awareness of my body slowly creeps over my mind. I usually didn’t think about it – I focus on my job as Death's assistant or playing with water. But when I’m not doing any of that I find myself hyperaware of the border between my thigh and my pants, the press of my frozen fingers on my staff. My soul fills me, a Jack-shaped thing, and the edges are an ever-present awareness in my mind. I wonder if most newly dead souls feel the same and imagine an immobile prison they can't bust out of. For me, it is just the space I take up in the world. I do have the advantage of other dead people in that I can move my body. We’ve never found any other soul that could move their corpse. 

Death’s best guess is that something had done something to my body before or as I died. It isn't blood and oxygen and neurons moving my body, human limitations. It’s my thoughts, my soul. Tricky magic, she’d said, and rare. 

Not rare enough to know who did it. If I ever discovered who did, I’m not telling Death. She’d want them to reverse it. The only thing I want to do thank them for giving me the opportunity to be Jack Frost. 

I don’t know how long we sat there in the tree. Maybe an hour. Certainly longer than any time we’ve spent at the pond in 300 years. It’s probably the reason why we were eventually found by the Guardians. 


	2. Death and I Take a Field Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Death meet the Guardians.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, let's not talk about how much I edited the conversation flows here, okay?

“Crikey, someone's actually here this time.”

Death and I crane our heads down to the voice. Below us, shivering in the night air, is a tall, bipedal, gray rabbit who looks shocked to see us.

I might have been following Death around for 300 years, but she doesn't interact with other spirits much. She knows _of_ other spirits, but the only ones we occasionally run into are Tooth Fairy helpers. I have no idea who this rabbit spirit is. I wait for her to fill me in.

“E. Aster Bunnymund,” Death says, loud enough to double as a greeting to the spirit below. She doesn’t hop down from our tree branch, but she leans forward to peer at him. Her long black braid slips to fall against her cheek. “The Easter Bunny, as the kids call him,” she adds softly for me. "Goes by 'Bunny' if I remember right."

The Easter Bunny? What is he doing out in the snow on a March evening? Who cares, he’s someone new!

I push off the tree and fall thirty feet to the ground. Couldn’t do that if I was alive, but I am not entirely beholden to physics despite being in a mortal body. My knees don’t feel a thing when I land, and I have no trouble balancing on six toes.

“Hi!” I walk toward Bunny, waving. “I’m Jack Frost.”

“We’ve been looking for you for a few centuries, mate.”

Twirling my crook, I circle him out of curiosity. Damn, he had to be at least six feet tall. “Why are you looking for me?” It’s funny to watch him crane his neck to follow me. He has a delightfully grumpy face.

“Yes, why?”

I missed Death joining us on the ground, but she’s standing on the snow when I finish my circle. Her hand reaches for me, but instead of the expected attempt to grab my soul she snags my elbow. I frown at her hand. She gives a slight tug. I take half a step closer to her.

I want to ask what gives, but she’s wearing her serious expression. Whatever Bunny might be here for, she doesn’t think it’s a party invitation.

Bunny stands up to his full height, puffing out his chest. “Jack Frost, we’d like you to join the Guardians. I'm here to take you to the Pole”

Before I can ask what the Guardians are, Death bursts out laughing. Her grip on my arm loosens as her hands curl around her stomach. Her laugh is loud, startling, and honestly a little scary. I’ve never seen her laugh like this before.

Bunny looks equally wrong footed. He catches my eye and I shrug. Finally, Death pulls herself together and stands straight. “Jack, a Guardian of Childhood?” She sounds dismissive of the idea.

“Hey! I’m good with kids!”

Still looking at Bunny, Death pats my shoulder once before letting her hand stay there. “Yes, you are.”

I’m missing something, but I keep quiet. Death may keep trying to rip my soul out of my body, but she’s only ever looked out for me. 

Bunny glares at Death, but he gets the idea. We're a packaged deal. I'm not going with him unless Death approves, and even then, she's coming too. Bunny sighs, sitting on his haunches. He looks a little sheepish.

“Manny’s been telling us to meet someone here one and off for three centuries. I'm assuming he means Jack here," Bunny gestures with a paw at me, "And that he's our next Guardian and not a threat to take out. No offense, mate, but you don't look like a threat.”

I lean on my staff and give him my whitest smile.

"And me?" Death asks.

Bunny scans Death from head to toe, assessing in a way that tells me he sees Death properly, not as projection of his imagination like humans. She's in a pantsuit tonight, black as night, and looks more like a first-year law assistant than a spirit almost as old as Gaia. "You could be a threat," Bunny admits, "But I can't imagine you doing something that would make Manny label you as a threat."

She hums. “Manny?”

Bunny points up. “The Man in the Moon. He oversees the Guardians.”

As one, Death and I glance up at the full moon in the sky. Then we look at each other.

I raise an eyebrow. _I thought the Man in the Moon wasn’t real?_

She tilts her head to the right, lips pursed. _Same. But if he’s not..._

“Okay, cool.” I clap my hands together once, startling Bunny. “Let’s go talk to Manny.”

Bunny shifts on his back paws, darting a nervous glance at Death. It’s obvious he never expected to run into her, and she makes him uneasy.

I step closer to my friend. Lean on her arm. “If you want to take me to the Pole, you have to take us both.”

Bunny throws up his hands. Paws? “Fine! But I'll warn you, Death, pretty sure North won't like you being there.”

Her face is blank, but I notice the fists she making. Death may have long ago come to terms with how the dying see her, but apparently spirits' opinions are harder to brush off. I wrap my arm around her waist and give Bunny a stubborn, reproachful look. He doesn’t notice. Instead, the Easter Bunny double taps the ground. A large hole appears.

“Tunnel to the Pole. Follow me.” He jumps in. Death and I exchange a glance before following him.

* * *

The Pole is the _North Pole._ As in Santa’s Workshop. I’d known Santa Claus was a spirit, but as we travel the underground tunnels Death and Bunny give me a breakdown of the Guardians of Childhood. There's Toothiana, aka Tooth, who kids call the Tooth Fairy. Sanderson Mansnoozie, aka Sandy, is the Sandman who spins the golden threads at night Death and I sometimes see. Santa Claus is really an old Cossack named Nicholas St. North, otherwise known as North.

The Man in the Moon Bunny can't give us a lot of information about. For being the supposed leader of the Guardians, he doesn't have much of a role in the group or in children tales. He just... lives on the moon. 

Bunny’s tunnels open up a mile away from the Workshop. He yelps about the cold the entire walk to the doors, hoping along the top of the snowbanks. Death floats above. I wade into the snow, pushing through piles up to my thighs. I control water, but snow has always been my favorite version of the element.

I toss a snowball at Death. It hits her back, and while she turns to smile at me, she doesn’t make her own. Sometimes we play, but right now I can tell her mind is too occupied.

So's mine, but it's filled with the type of thoughts I find energizing. There have been spirits looking for me. Me! Well, maybe. I simply happened to be in the place Bunny was told to find someone. But that could be me in a non-coincidentally way! And if that's the case, there’s a chance Manny may have been the one to cast the spell that created me. I eye the pinkie on my left hand I’ll probably lose to frostbite in a year. Eventually, I’ll die a second time. But that is centuries yet, and I want to thank Manny for the second life. I certainly want to do so before Death figures out the spell and how to reverse it.

The closer we get to the Pole, the more impressed I am. The wooden building is huge, well-constructed with the largest logs I've ever seen. It's also decorated with detailed artworks. Small paintings and carvings adorn the walls, shutters, and overhangs. Mosaics shine in the windows. The carved doors we enter through are ten feet tall, a necessity considering Santa employs _yetis._ That’s something the stories have gotten wrong for decades.

Bunny gestures for us to follow, loping through the workshop. The yetis and, yes, tiny elves too, stare as Death and I pass by all the toy making stations. Death has her blank stare on again. I glare at the workers who whisper and stare at her.

Bunny leads us to a small lounge. Through the doorway, I see the other Guardians. North has more of a bad-boy vibe than I expected, with two large tattoos on either forearm. Death and I drift to a stop, watching from the hallway as Bunny recaps our meeting in at the pond. I can't make out Tooth's face, but North wears a deep frown.

“Don’t let the whispers bother you,” I tell Death.

“They don’t,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “Or at least, they do, but only a little. Humans will never have the opportunity to know me. Spirits don't have that excuse, yet they still act like this.”

“You're the opposite of whatever all the spirits say.”

“That I’m an omen of doom? I chill the room? Will rip your soul out of your chest?”

“Okay, you're all of that. But I'm also a death omen and chill the room.” I smile at her. “And you only rip out souls for their own good.”

Her hand twitches, like she wants to try for my soul again, but she refrains. Her lips twitch too, the start of a smile. I give her a hug, which Death returns. She never outright says, but I know once I’m gone – soul released or body too decayed to move – she'll miss me. I'm learning just how few people see her as separate from what she does.

We’re interrupted by a high buzzing. With two-foot wings and covered in jewel-toned feathers, Tooth is much larger than her helper fairies. I can't tell her height, but she's hovering a foot off the ground to put her at Death's eye level. She looks both excited and nervous as her gaze darts between me, Death, and our arms around each other. When Tooth catches my eyes, she smiles.

“It’s nice to meet you, Jack. My girls are always happy when they see you.”

“Yeah?” I feel suddenly shy. Humans know I'm the friendly face that preludes death. Happy is never what I'd call our interactions.

“Come on. Meet the rest of the Guardians.”

She flies into the lounge. I trail, Death beside me.

Introductions are short; though we’ve never met we've all heard _something_ about the others. The lounge is cozy, with windows on one side while the other opens to a great hollow space in the center of the workshop. While I imagine I could look down and see floors and floors of toy makers, suspended from the ceiling is a large globe. Its equator is a few inches above my eye line.

The Guardians are less cozy. Tooth keeps smiling at me, something that is rapidly making me unnerved. Sandy, who can only speak with pictograms, hovers on a small cloud level with North's waist and ignores us for a goblet of eggnog. North and Bunny have matching crossed arms and serious faces.

"Bunny says you want to talk to Manny?" North asks in a Russian accent.

"Yes," Death answers. "Whatever he's been telling you is wrong, or you've been making a lot of assumptions."

"It's probably the latter," Bunny admits.

"What _has_ he told you?" I ask.

“Manny talks in shadows,” North says. “He projects on the floor.”

“And what, exactly, has Manny been showing you?” Death demands.

Sighing, North waves a hand behind us toward the globe. It’s covered in yellow lights. “A blue light showed up on the Globe. A pond, near a town currently called Burgess. The yellow lights are believers, children. Blue is spirits. With light came shadows from Manny, an arrow and my sleigh.”

I do my best not to glance at Death. They’re talking about _my_ pond. I build myself an ice ramp to the Globe. I skate up and find Burgess. There's no blue light and when I run a finger over the green paint nothing catches. The whole globe is smooth and warm. Even the small little yellow lights near me aren't coming from a bulb.

Tooth continues the story. "This was back in, oh, 1703, I think. It was obvious Manny wanted us to go and meet the spirit. So we got into North's sleigh and went, but no one was there. We figured they'd left before we arrived. Every so often in the past three hundred years, the light goes off again and one of us heads out. The pond was always empty.”

“Except today,” Bunny jumps in with a shrug, “Like I mentioned before, we think Manny was pointing out either a new member or a threat.”

Sandy throws up a cloud in the shape of +1.

"Yeah," Bunny agrees, "As the decades went by, we became more and more convinced Manny meant a new member and not a threat. Of the two of you, it makes the most sense that Jack Frost is our new Guardian."

“Death could be a great Guardian,” I spat out. “You never know.”

All four Guardians look uncomfortable at the prospect, but I don't have time to be angry with them. I'm too busy thinking.

Time is loose for me, I’ve lived so long, but there are a few dates I remember. January 1700 is one because that’s when Death found me. And I _think_ it was 1703 when we tried to reset the death pull that drew Death to the pond. I'd slipped into the water and froze myself in it for a few minutes. It hadn't worked.

“Maybe Manny wanted you to find something, but you never looked hard enough,” Death says blandly.

“Like what?” North asks.

Death purses her lips and I hop off the Globe to stand next to her. The two of us have searched that pond hundreds of times and found nothing. The Guardians may be right about something – that Manny had meant them to find me.

Why?

Death snaps a hand out and plunges it into my chest. I tilt my head - _really? Now? -_ but she’s paying me zero attention. Instead, she’s watching the Guardian’s reactions. They are all _horrified._

“Oi!”

“What are you doing?!”

“Jack!”

There’s the slight tug on my heart, but my soul, like all the times before, stays put in the unbeating organ. Death pulls out her hand. The Guardians continue to gape at her. I bow as if this were a magic trick, and when their attention turns to me I give them the meanest glare I can. No one is allowed to criticize Death for doing her job.

"Jack can't be a Guardian because he's not a spirit," Death says. "I found him in the pond, frozen on the bottom, a month dead." 

To help Death sell the story, I use my shepherd's crook for balance and raise my right foot. I rarely look at it, I lost the two smallest toes to slow-moving frostbite and my whole foot is a sickly blue. That's what you get for being a frozen corpse. “I’m just a soul trapped, in a very, very slowly decaying body.”

Death ignores North's wide eyes, the way Tooth's hands fly to cover her mouth, and barrels on ahead. "I believe Manny is the one who cast that spell that trapped Jack's soul. I demand to talk to him about that. And if on Earth he can only talk through shadows, then I demand you take me to the Moon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, we're getting plotty now! I'm 80% of what's gonna happen now, so there's that. 
> 
> I spend a lot of time on Tumblr as [ Uniasus ](uniasus.tumblr.com) if you wanna come say hi.


	3. Death and I Land On the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something's not right on the Moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rubs hands together* Okay readers! This fic goes through a tone change in this chapter, expect us to be here for a while.

Convincing the Guardians that we needed to have an actual conversation with Manny was easy – Death and I aren’t the only ones who want clarification. The harder part, the one we’re all stumbling over, is how to actually _get_ there.

Because, despite being their leader, the Guardians don’t have a way to access Manny. The shadows he sends are sporadic and entirely on his own schedule. It's so bizarre. Why would you not want an easy way to communicate with one of your members? Even though Death rarely contacted Gaia, she had a way to do so.

Our solution? Sandy's sand. I’m not entirely sure how Guardian powers work, but anything Sandy imagines he can make real. Even a spaceship that will fit all of us that can travel faster than light.

I stick close to Death as we watch Sandy bring the ship into being. He has a limited amount of sand to work with, so his original design similar to a kid’s drawing of a rocket ship keeps changing. Six of us have to fit inside after all, and North and Bunny both are fairly tall. Sandy makes the oversized boosters smaller, smooshes the cylinder so it’s more like a rectangle, and then soothes the edges. The result is a box with rounded corners, a tiny jet engine on top, and a wall panel inside that I really hope is functional. This ship may run on imagination, and I may already be dead, but I have no desire to float through space untethered.

There are no seats, all the sand has gone to the walls, and even then, the floor space is limited. I’m not looking forward to the tight fit.

“How long do you think it’ll take for us to get there? Death?” I elbow her and she jumps.

“Sorry, Jack. I was thinking.”

“'Bout what?”

Death frowns, toying with the end of her braid. “No spirit I know has ever been to the Moon. And now we know there's a spirit on it, no one talks about him. I wish we could call Gaia. Ask if she knows something.”

I glance out the window. Nothing but snow and ice, neither of which would work. “We could ask Bunny to-”

“Looks great, Sandy! Let’s go!” North’s voice booms in the ice tunnel. Behind us, in ice-carved stalls, his reindeer snort.

“Don’t have to convince me, mate,” Bunny says. “The sooner we go, the sooner I can be back for Easter prep. This shouldn’t take more than an hour, yeah?”

Sandy wobbles a hand in the air. The sand-ship above his head moves fast, but the figures of two people talking have slow-moving jaws. Our time away will depend on how quickly Death gets her answers from Manny.

Bunny glances at us both before hopping into the ship. North and Sandy follow, Death and I on their heels. Tooth is the last inside, after giving instructions to her helper fairies.

The ship, like I expected, is tight. Death and I cram ourselves in the back. Tooth shuts her wings and drifts to the floor before me. She’s shorter than I thought, her head comes to my sternum, but with her feet on the floor her shoulders aren’t bumping into anyone else's. I feel more confident that we’ll all fit.

“Ready?” she asks me.

I smile at her, and woah, I think she blushes under her feathers. “Sorta. I’d like to know for sure why Manny is looking for me. And if it was his magic that made me like this.” I pluck the edges of my sweatshirt.

“Well, if he is, I’ll have to thank him.” Tooth places a warm hand over mine. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Jack.”

I’m not sure, but I think Tooth is flirting with me? I side-eye Death, hoping for some sort of clue, but she’s busy watching Sandy at the control panel. I’m not used to talking to people I will see a second time. I want to rub the back of my head, break eye contact. It takes a lot of courage for me to respond.

“I’m glad I got to meet you too, Tooth.”

The ship vibrates. There’s no sound associated with liftoff, and I can’t see due to the lack of windows, but the ship is for sure moving. Through the space between Bunny and North, I see Sandy clap his hands. He presses a button.

We all crash into the back of the ship from the rough acceleration. Death and I hit the wall, Tooth hits me, and then North and Bunny’s weights fall on us too. I spit out a mouthful of Bunny’s shoulder fur to check on Death. Her grimace peeks at me from behind North’s huge biceps. North himself looks like Christmas came early. His eyes are wide with excitement.

“Yes! I love ship, Sandy!”

Sandy, the only one of us not affected by the speed, gives a thumbs up.

It only takes a minute for Bunny’s weight to be uncomfortable, and I can’t imagine Tooth feels any better. I try to push Bunny away just a tad to give her more space, but the Easter Bunny either weighs a thousand pounds or the force from our speed is truly something. Bunny grunts at my push, but that’s all I get for my effort.

“Can I just,” Tooth says, wiggling between us, “My wing’s caught.”

Bunny shifts left, I shift right, and Tooth rolls counterclockwise to take up the small space between me and Death. She’s the least encumbered of us five at the moment, and I almost hate her for it. Bunny doesn’t try to soften his crash against me. I _oof._ At least he apologizes.

I cross my fingers, hoping for this to not last too long. It’s the magic cue. The ship starts decelerating, thankfully not so fast we all smoosh into the front. We land on the Moon nice and easy. I highly suspect Sandy made us all crunch in the back for his own amusement.

A door materializes and we step through to the Moon.

Physics doesn't seem to exist for spirits and magically controlled corpses. I don't bounce really high when I jump in the air. Still, I can tell I'm not on Earth. The surface beneath my feet is gritty like I'm walking on an uneven layer of fine sand. The light is harsher, brighter, and the shadows look… not wrong, but not right either.

Bunny nervously taps his foot on the ground. No tunnel forms. I try to summon the water in the air to make a snowball. Nothing. Sandy and Tooth are in the air, turns out they can still fly, and yup. There's the tug on my heart. Death can still reach inside my body to try to yank out my soul. Magic still works. It's just there's nothing here for my magic to work on.

"Alexandrov," North whispers. He's facing behind us, looking up. We all turn to do the same.

There's a castle on the Moon.

No, that's not right. It's too smooth. Too even. Too symmetrical. Four thin spires reach toward the sky, with a large tube in the center. It's topped like the bulbs in Russian architecture, while the spire tops are thin metal artwork that reminds me of weathervanes.

"It's a space ship," North whispers again. His eyes are wide. "It's wondrous."

I walk up next to him. Swing my staff onto my shoulder. "Wanna go exploring?"

North looks down at me and I give him the most innocent grin. He grins back in glee until Death steps up next to me.

"Does Manny live here?" she asks.

"He must." Tooth flies over to join us, hovering a few inches over my shoulder. "Sandy says this is the only structure on the Moon."

"How have the humans not found this?" I ask.

"Same way they haven't found our homes," Bunny answers. "Magic. Come on. Let's go knock on his door. Can't believe we didn't do this sooner." He hops around Sandy's ship and heads toward Manny's.

"I know!" Tooth flies after him. "It was so easy. We should have come say hello before now."

North and Sandy follow them, having a conversation. Death and I trail at a slower pace. She's staring at the tall ship before us, frowning.

"Something wrong?"

She hums. "I'm not sure. There's a pull, here. Not a death pull, but something in the ship is calling me. But…"

"But what?"

"It also feels like something is telling me to stay very far away."

My eyes snap to her face. She sounds uncertain. There's a vibration in her voice. It takes me a moment to recognize the emotion because I've only seen humans unsteady like this. Death is scared.

Immediately, my spine stiffens and I step closer to her side. Nothing _should_ scare her. The closest I've seen her is uncertain and confused when she first found me. She gazes at Manny's ship, her face a growing sense of _nope_ even as her feet bring her inches closer.

We slow down, steps matching, and inspect the building we're approaching. It's hard to tell but there are giant windows curling around the edges of the towers. I can see the stars beyond them. My feet have kicked up dust that's started to settle on my body and the same thing has happened to the small weathervanes on the ship. There's a layer over them and small piles have formed at their base as the moondust fell. The closer we get, the more dings I see in the metal. There's no air here to corrode the alloy, but there are meteorites.

Manny's ship looks like there's no one home.

The closer we walk, the smaller our steps become. I'm not sensitive to souls and situations, not like Death, but the hair on the back of my neck rises. Death cranes her neck looking at the bulb on the top of the large central tower. Or would it be the front of the ship?

When we reach the ship, the Guardian's previous enthusiasm is gone.

"Something doesn't feel right," Bunny says. His arms are crossed over his chest. He's sitting on the Moon. He's hunched. It takes me a moment to realize he's making himself smaller. 

Tooth looks dim, her feathers not as bright as they'd been on Earth. Sandy looks just as shiny, but that could be because he's the only gold thing in this greyed-out world. North rubs the handle of a sword at his belt, and I can't bring myself to wonder why Santa has a sword. I just know that, right now, I'm glad he's got one. The edge in the air is getting to us all.

Sandy flashes an SOS above his head, followed by a question mark.

"Is possible," North strokes his beard, "that yes, Manny needs help."

"Why didn't he tell us?" Tooth asks.

"Maybe he has," Bunny answers. "Maybe he wasn't telling us to go to the pond to find a new Guardian. Maybe he was pointing to spirits who can help him."

The Guardians look between me and Death. Death ignores them. She's still looking up. The long line of her pale throat seems so narrow. Her brows are furrowed.

I shrug. "Don't know what we can do to help some guy who crash-landed on the Moon. I'm not a mechanic."

Death's attention snaps to me. "Say that again."

 _Ookkkay_. "I'm not a mechanic."

"No, the other thing."

"Don't know what we can do to help some guy who crashed on the Moon?"

Death's face lights up, but it's a frantic light. "North, has Manny gone by any other name? Tell me _everything_ you know about him."

North looks startled by her fervor but starts into his story. "He created the Guardians several centuries ago-"

"And before that?"

Tooth flies over to whisper in my ear. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure," I whisper back. "But something is really freaking Death out."

A flash of gold erupts near the ship. It's Sandy, gesturing toward something he's found. Death ignores him to keep quizzing North, but the rest of us head over.

Sandy's found a seam in the metal.

"A door," Bunny says. "Quick, help me find a handle. We need to get inside to help Manny."

"Are you sure?" I watch Sandy, Tooth, and Bunny search the surrounding walls.

"Yeah, mate."

"It's just that, I don't think we should get in the ship. It feels wrong. And I've never, _never_ seen Death scared of something but I'm pretty sure what's in this ship? It scares her. Do you _really_ want to deal with something that frightens Death?"

Bunny scoffs, but Tooth stops her searching long enough to answer me.

"We're Guardians of Childhood, Jack. We fight fear every day, so children have happy lives and wonderful memories. We _will_ get to the bottom of this and we _will_ help Manny."

"Found something!" Bunny puts his paw against a spot on the door. Glowing lines of silver light grow around his paw, stretching high and to the right. They curl like frost lines, like tiny vines, to split and combine. A design forms – a large thick arc and a solid line along the seam Sandy found. On either side, the silver lines etch sceneries of places I've never seen. Across the whole thing stretches letters.

"What's it say?" Bunny asks.

I take a step back to read the whole thing. Tooth keeps pace with me.

"I can't tell." She squints at the lettering.

"What are you talking about? It's in plain English. It says 'The Moon Clipper.'"

Everyone turns to me.

"Did you say The Moon Clipper?!" Death shrieks, but her voice is quickly overtaken by the sound of the doors opening.

They haven't opened in years, centuries I bet, yet they open smoothly, unencumbered by the moondust that had gathered before the door.

"Let's go!" Tooth grabs my hand and pulls me toward the inside of the ship. It's dark inside, but Bunny has already crossed the threshold with Sandy.

"Jack!" Death's running toward me. "Don't go in there!"

North comes up behind her, scooping Death up around the waist. "Ahah! You do know what has happened to Manny!"

She beats on his arms, but North breezes past me and Tooth to step inside the ship. And well. If they're forcing Death inside, I'm going too. I don't want her in this ship, in The Moon Clipper, by herself.

Tooth and I follow, Tooth writing her hands. The door slams shut behind us.

It's dark enough I can't see. I can hear the buzz of Tooth's wings. Death hisses "Let me down!" I hear an _oomph_ , and then Death is pressed up against my side.

"We need to _get out,_ " she whispers.

"Why?" Tooth asks. Like Death, she's whispering.

"Because if this is the Moon Clipper, Manny is Tsar Lunanoff. And _that_ means Manny died a long time ago. And without me nearby to release his soul…"

"Then what?" I ask. Death's said this before, she releases souls from someone's body for reason.

A sound comes from the left. We all shut up and listen. It's a clank, followed by a hiss, followed by another clank. Every hair on my body stands up.

Death grabs my hand and runs in the opposite direction. I trip after her, the Guardians at our back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double high fives to anyone who guesses where I'm going with this.


	4. Death and I Meet A Robot (or Ten)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group gets a first-hand look at just what a fearling can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to figure out how horror works, so stay with me readers!
> 
> Also, shout out to kuromi1234 who tossed out two ideas for where this was heading and wa-la. It's a combo of both. 
> 
> I did not expect to churn out this chapter so fast, but hey! I hope you enjoy it.

We run. None of us know where we’re going, but miraculously our route is free of things to stumble over. I can’t see, I don’t know if _anyone_ can see anything, so my world narrows down to Death’s grip on my hand, our harsh breathing, and the faint echos of our feet on the metal walls.

Eventually, Death stops. I clutch her jacket and startle when a small set of hands touch my shoulder.

“It’s Tooth,” she whispers in my ear.

One by one, the others reach out. North’s beard brushes my cheek. Bunny steps on my foot. Something curls around my waist, pulling me tighter into the huddle. I think it’s Sandy’s sand.

We stand there trying to quiet our breathing as we strain our ears. Slowly, we relax our grip on one another as we hear nothing. When a small light appears above us, we all tense again, but it turns out to be Sandy. He glows gold, apparently. While he’d turned it off while we ran, he’s now the dimness of the first electric bulbs.

In the weak light, Death and I check each other over. Strands of hair have come out of her braid, whisps around her ears, but other than that she looks fine. Her business suit doesn't even look ruffled. I transfer my grip from her lapels to my staff.

Our circle expands and Sandy floats down into the center. Above his head is a full bouquet of question marks. Everyone looks to Death.

Her lips thin as she casts her gaze around. It’s obvious she knows what’s going on, but also worried about this being a safe place to share.

“What do you know?” North demands.

Welp, guess we’re doing this right here in the middle of the spooky hallway.

Death pulls us in a football huddle, leaning over Sandy who stands glowing on the floor. Her eyes are wide. “Gaia mentioned that she once met a man from space. He’d landed on Earth, they had a conversation, and then he left.”

“Tsar Lunanoff,” Bunny guesses.

“Yes. Gaia said he had a ship called the Moon Clipper. This was a very long time ago. Gaia mentioned he really liked Teotihuacan. But no matter what type of alien you are, no one can live that long. If Manny’s ship is still here, he _died_ here. And that’s a problem.”

“Why?” North presses.

“Because -” She cuts herself off.

I don’t hear anything, but my skin prickles. It's like we’re suddenly not the only ones listening, but beyond the glow Sandy gives off I see nothing.

Across from me, Tooth shivers. She pulls her arms around herself, rubs her hands over her forearms. I take a step back, the coldness Death and I give off a must be getting to her. Except the surrounding air is getting warmer. 

I shift nervously on my feet. I don’t like warm places. Whether because my body is attuned to cold weather based on how I died or an instinctual fear of what hot weather does to a frozen corpse, I don’t know. I feel the frost I adorn my sweatshirt with melt. I pout at the growing damp edges.

Tooth’s shivering intensifies. Bunny fluffs up. Death looks like she wants to take off her blazer. Sandy’s light dims as he holds a hand up as if to shield his face.

I stepped closer to Death, hoping to soak in some of her chill. She stares into the dark but puts an arm around me. The temperature rises.

Tooth’s teeth chatter.

“How can you be cold?” I hiss at her. “All my ice is melting.”

“ _Run.”_ Death yells.

Her hand is hot and sweaty against my wrist, but we take off again. Sandy is still glowing, but something’s stopping him from dashing forward. North runs up behind him, presses him close to his chest. He takes the lead, Sandy’s glow lighting the way.

Ten steps down the hallway, something appears in the center. A robot, with inky shadows coming out of its joints. The closer we get, the hotter the air is. I’m going to melt. The ice in my blood will disappear, gangrene will seep into my limps, I’ll die -

The robot doesn’t move, so we run around it, but as we pass a voice hisses “ _bodiessss”_ and I swear my heart is about to beat for the first time in centuries.

“Not real, not real, not real,” Death mutters under her breath. “It’s in your head.”

I’m pretty sure the robot and the voice are real, but I’m too busy concentrating on running. The farther we go, the colder the air becomes. It doesn’t turn into the freezing cold of the Arctic, but cold enough my magic refreezes the water on my sweatshirt and staff. 

There’s no water here on the moon. If I need to use my power over the element to _do something_ in the future, the only weapon I have are the droplets on my clothes. The thought makes my stomach drop.

North stops, panting. The temperature evens out; I’m not melting and Tooth hasn’t rubbed her arms for warmth. We wheeze and listen, very aware that we’ve been doing nothing but running down a straight hallway occupied by one very creepy robot.

“It’s split,” Death sounds absolutely horrified.

“What’s split?” North askes.

“A,” she swallows. “A fearling.”

We all shudder at the word.

“What’s a fearling?” I ask.

“It’s what happens to a soul trapped in its body. If a soul isn’t released from the flesh, if it can’t move on, it… turns bad. Can you imagine what’s that like? Your sense of self, your soul, trapped in a prison that’s decomposing. You can’t see, you can’t communicate with anyone. It's isolation and sensory deprivation all at once. The soul gets scared, gets _consumed_ by its fear, and turns into a fearling.”

I gulp. “That’s what you’re worried about me turning into.”

Death pulls me into a hug. I cling back.

“Yes,” she says. “That you haven’t become a fearling yet is a miracle, and I refuse to let that happen.”

Bunny coughs into his paw. “How dangerous are these things?”

“Very.” Death pulls away, but I stick close. The Guardians eye me like any second I’m going to sprout shadowy tendrils.

“Fearlings may start as the embodiment of one person’s fears, but if unchecked those fears grow. They induce fear in other creatures, feeding off of it, and when a fearling has eaten enough fear it splits in two and the second one finds a host. The more fearlings, the greater the fear. It, look, that was clearly a robot,” Death points back down the hallway. “Fearlings only form in _organic_ bodies. Manny’s fearling already split once, with the new part inhabiting a robot. If it is looking for bodies, it's ready to split again.”

“Can we stop it?” North asks.

Death thins her lips. “I’ve taken on singular fearlings before. Pulled the fearling out of its body and talked it down until the process reversed. But a split fearling? A fearling in a robot body? One that has festered in its own fear for centuries? Our best bet is to leave and make sure no one comes here again.”

“We can’t do that,” Tooth says.

“Why not? We can’t beat this!”

“Well, maybe we can!” Tooth flies into Death’s face. “I already told Jack this. We’re the Guardians of Childhood. This is what we’re _here_ for. If fearlings make it to Earth, the children will be terrified. It’s better to take care of this now before the problem grows worse.”

“And if we become its next bodies? Can you imagine a fearling with your powers?”

“That won’t happen if we stop it!”

“What if you pull out Manny’s soul?” Bunny asks. “He’s, uh, got to be around here somewhere.”

“I doubt he’s as well preserved as Jack,” Death deadpans. “His original body may have decomposed and the fearling is in something else. If it’s even in something.”

“They can just wander free?” North's alarm is sharp. Tooth and I dart our gaze outside of our bubble of light.

“Who knows?" Death shrugs. "This is all unprecedented.”

A whirlwind of sand cuts through the argument. We freeze, listening for the fearling, but when we hear nothing look to Sandy. He’s floating near Bunny’s shoulder, and with our attention caught starts pantomiming something. I’m completely lost by the second image.

North, however, understands the sand show. “We got message on Earth. Someone sent them. There might be person on Moon to save.”

The Guardians stand straight and rally around Sandy. Bleeding hearts, the lot of them. I’m with Death, I want to get out of here as fast as possible, but we won’t be able to without them. Sandy is our ride home.

“This isn’t going to work,” Death says.

“Then we’ll give it our best shot,” Tooth says back.

The Guardians start marching down the hallway. After sharing grimaces, Death and I walk behind them.

* * *

Death and I don’t touch. We’re all we have in the world, but we’ve never been one for hugs, shoulder brushes, or similar gestures. Sure, Death plunges her hand into my chest multiple times a week, but usually when we touch anyone it’s to ease the dying. I guess, after that, touch is not how we want to express our feelings.

That said, I cling to Death’s hand. We’re both squeezing as we walk behind the Guardians. I have a mild fear of heatwaves, which the fearling had manipulated me into feeling. I don't want it to make me experience larger terrors; holding Death’s hand is both a comfort and a shield.

In the glow of Sandy’s body, we hug one of the ship’s walls. With a light and a slow pace, I can take in The Moon Clipper's beauty. The walls give off a faint, if deep, blue tint. Etched into the tall panels around us are more curling designs like those on the door we entered. I wonder if activated they provide hallway lighting. No one tries.

We entered via one of the smaller towers and have walked more than its circumference, I’m sure. Our two runs away from the fearling have gotten us thoroughly lost even though I can’t recall making any turns. I wonder if we missed them, or if the fearling was playing with our minds even then. Either way, between that and the Guardian’s random wandering, I can’t orient us.

We come across a door seam. The Guardians stop and search for an open button. Sandy’s light isn’t bright enough to reach across the whole hallway, so Death and I stand in the middle. She's staring up at the ceiling, though we can’t see it. I keep looking left and right, on guard for fearlings.

Death’s hand in mine is sweaty, and I’m heated from being on high alert. I only think something else might be at play when I notice Tooth shiver. No doubt, if warm weather makes me worry, she feels the same about cold.

“ _Guys,”_ I hiss. Death snaps her attention away from the ceiling.

By that point, it’s too late. The temperature goes from maybe warm to hundred degrees in a second. The frost on my clothes don’t just melt, it evaporates. I try to stop it, I need that water! What if I need to make an ice knife or some other weapon?

Death pulls me to her chest. “I won’t let them take you. I won’t, I won’t.”

From the shadows, in a single loud clank, step ten moonbots in a half-circle around us. I don't know how they walk quietly in a metal ship that echos my steps. Or maybe fear gives them the opportunity to show up like they do because suddenly seeing ten fearling-controlled robots and _knowing_ they could sneak up on you at any point in the future is terrifying.

“No!” Death pushes me toward the Guardians, who bravely stand their ground.

Tooth is flat-footed on the carpet, but her face is in a snarl and her wings buzz. North and Bunny have fallen into fighter’s stances, North with his sword drawn while Bunny wields a boomerang. Sandy has imagined up two longs whips, their edges are fuzzy as if they’re being blown away in the wind. Sandy’s gaze keeps flickering from the whips to the fearlings and I realize we share a fear – losing your weapons.

“Open door!” North shouts at Death and I. We squeeze between their bodies and the Guardians step forward to do battle.

I can tell they’re unsteady on their feet, but each Guardian looks no less ready to fight. They’re living up to their name. They’re guarding, and this isn’t the first time they’ve faced fear. I turn my back to them, pressing random places on the wall around the seam.

The fearlings step closer with synchronized _clanks_ and with each one my desperation to open the door grows. Behind the door is salvation, simply because I need it to be. I cannot fight. My water is gone. Death stands at my back, placing herself between me and the battle. She’s never wielded weapons, who threatens Death?, but pleads with me. “Open it, Jack. Open the door! Please, please!”

“SANDY!”

I turn around at North’s yell. He and Tooth are shoulder to shoulder, leaving the fighting to Sandy and Bunny who have ranged weapons. Except, as I watch, the whip Sandy curled around two fearlings dissolves. He can’t talk, but the shock on his face is clear. My stomach clenches in sympatric fear, _powerless, defenseless, there’s nothing to stop them._ Shadowy tendrils whip out and wrap around Sandy’s middle. They yank. Sandy crashes into a moonbot. The fearling in the metal skins swallows them both whole.

“No!” Tooth shrieks.

“OPEN THE DAMN DOOR, JACK!” Death yells.

The fearlings are fifteen, ten feet away, pressing closer and closer. I scramble at the wall, reaching high. I’m sobbing. They ate Sandy, they’re going to eat us too.

“ _More bodies,”_ the fearlings say. Their voices are sharp arrows, tiny teeth. The sounds draw not blood, but rational thought. My fingers frantically touch the wall, random directions I don't tell them. Death grips my waist so hard I feel her fingerprints through my clothes.

Finally, finally, silver light spirals into being and creates a door. I don’t care what design they form, I’m begging. “Open, open faster.”

The moonbots are closer. They have glowing, yellow eyes. Dark tentacles wiggle from their joints and mouths. They look like they’re screaming. I scream too.

I fall through the open door. Death pushes me further inside. North tosses in Tooth, who can’t seem to move while she stares at the fearlings. Bunny and North quickly follow us into the room and the door slams shut.

_Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk._

The moonbots fall upon the door, metal on metal. Tooth is crying. _I’m_ crying, bundled up in Death’s arms. She’s whispering something in my hair I can’t make out. Why didn’t I open the door sooner? Why hadn’t I brought a bottle of water? I’m so warm I want to strip, but all I can do is stare at my purple feet.

Wait. Purple?

Eventually, I calm down. My body is still the cold it always has been. The fearlings don’t enter the room and slowly my mind settles. I push away from Death. She pulls me tighter for half a second, before letting me go.

“Everyone, everyone okay?” Death asks the room.

Tooth is still sobbing, and I can hear Bunny trying to get his breath under control. North sucks in air and answers. “Those that are here, yes. Don’t think fearlings can get in.”

“Great, it means I can yell at you now." Death's voice trembles. "This is why we should have left earlier. Because now that they’ve taken Sandy, they're going to take over his body. And if that gives him access to his power, if they figure out how to fly his ship, Earth is fucked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They are all so, so doomed.


	5. Death and I Get Half Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Sandy taken by the fearlings, Death, Jack and the Guardians need to come up with a plan. Something better than 'sit in this room till the fearlings take us.'

We sit in the dark for half an hour. Occasionally a moonbot hits the door, but the doors stay closed. Either they don't react to fearling-possessed moonbots, or they're not smart enough to find the switch.

The Guardians toss a lot of questions at Death, but the answers are some variation of what she's said before. A lot of "I don't know, this is new to me".

"You said you fight them with words?" Bunny asks.

Death sighs. "I talk them down when they're freshly turned. Like calming down a child after a scary movie. You tell them they're safe and the fear disappears. It can reverse the process of a soul turning into a fearling."

"But not Manny.'

"I don't _think_ Manny. Did you see how many fearlings were out there? Ten. Ten fearlings. That's a lot of fear. We barely kept our heads against one fearling."

As the Guardians and Death try to come up with a plan, I walk around the room. It's not completely dark, there are small windows that let in starlight, but it's hard to make out anything other than large shapes. I trail my hand on the wall when suddenly light blooms around the room.

Like the hallway, there are etches on the walls. As they fill with silver light, growing brighter every second, we can make out the room. There's the open space near the door we've been sitting in and beyond that rows and rows of shelves lined up like a library. Except these shelves don't hold books. They're arranged in small cubicles, with each set up like a dollhouse.

"What are those?" I ask, even as I step forward to peek.

Tooth flies forward to join me. "They're arranged so nicely inside. Look, they're painted and furnished. This one has a doll in the bed…"

She trails off as we peer in the cubby. It's not a doll in bed. It's a skeleton. A mouse skeleton.

"Toothy?" North calls out.

She ignores him, already buzzing between cubicles while I check the rest on this shelf.

"Jack?" Death asks.

"They've each got a mouse skeleton in them."

"All of them?" Bunny sounds alarmed.

Tooth comes back into view. "It looks like it.” Even her wings’ buzz sounds sad. “Most of them are tucked into bed, so maybe they died peacefully.”

"Doubtful," Death says. The Guardians look at her in horror.

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Fearlings feed on fear. It's how they grow. And if Manny's split _nine times_ that fear came from something."

"You think mice," North says.

"Look at the size of this room, there's got to be hundreds of moonmice." She waves a hand through the space. The number is probably right. "Apparently animal fear works just as great as human or spirit fear."

"There's a lot of animals on Earth," I say.

"Yes, there are."

The silence presses down on us. We need to protect Earth. We can't let the fearlings take Sandy's ship to the planet. We have no idea how to prevent that.

Something flickers in the corner of my eye. Now that the lights are on, other equipment in the room is too, including a computer terminal.

"Hey!" I rush toward it. "Maybe we can find a blueprint of the ship."

I touch the screen as the rest of the group presses in close. Bunny and North strain to see over my shoulders, while Death and Tooth each lean into my side.

"I can't read it," Tooth says and I give her a look.

"You couldn't read the door earlier either."

Death puts her hand on my back. "I can't read it either. Can you, Jack?"

"Yeah, it's a search bar. See, it says ‘search’." I point to the single word on the screen. There’s a text box below it. When my finger touches the screen, an on-screen keyboard appears. The letters are English, but they're not in QWERTY order. I frown, but hey. Alien ship. I'm surprised it's even in English.

"Okay, what are we searching for?"

"What are you talking about?" Bunny says. "We can't search. I have no idea what that alphabet is."

"But…it's English."

"No, Jack, it's not." Death reaches around me to point at the first letter. "What is this?"

"The letter b."

"Well, I see a concave arch."

I frown at the screen. "The next letter is G. What do you see?"

"Something that looks like a stylized S."

Slowly, I type in 'floorplan'. The screen blanks then reappears with split windows. On the right is a list of files. On the left, a preview pane. It's the opposite of Earth's setup, but I can't complain. The second file's preview is schematics for the Moon Clipper.

"Score!"

"Hold up." Bunny pulls me away from the screen. "How can do you know…Moonish?"

"Moonish?" North asks.

"Look, it needed a name. How can you understand all this stuff?"

I shrug. "I just can."

Bunny frowns. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but Death cuts him off. "Look, we thought Manny had a hand in Jack's… creation. Maybe that allows him to read – Moonish? Is that what you called it?"

"It would make sense." North stroked his beard, looking down at me.

"It might also mean Manny was alive three hundred years ago. I can't see a fearling creating Jack."

"I mean, I'm practically a zombie." I stick my hands out and walk forward a step. "Braaaains."

Tooth shudders. "Please don't do that. The fearlings drag out 'body' the same way."

Death's eyes go wide. "Jack, do a new search. Find anything you can about Burgess. Or the pond, don't know if Manny would know the town's name from here. Try 1700."

"Might not know Earth years either," Bunny offers.

I search neither. Instead, I slowly type in 'boy in lake'.

Three files appear. I click the first one. The line at the top of the block of text makes me hiss in air: _##Lead Guardians to boy in lake_

"Jack?" Death asks

I ignore her, scrolling through the page. It’s single words surrounded by weird symbols and letters. It’s not English, even though I recognize all the characters.

"I think," I say, still scrolling down, "This is a computer program written to make the light appear on the Globe in the Workshop."

"Really?" North pushes closer. He might live in a house of wood and ice and magic, but technology obviously fascinated him. Which I totally get. Compared to what was around when I first woke up, tech has come a long way. I find it pretty amazing at times. I can't imagine what a professional toy engineer thinks.

"Pretty sure," I say. The text scroll speeds up until it abruptly stops at the end of the document. There's more English here.

_##Run log_

_1 Earth day ago_

_493 Earth days ago_

_1694 Earth days ago_

_4096 Earth days ago_

_9997 Earth days ago_

"Yeah, it's gotta be." I tap my finger on the screen. "It's telling me the last time the program ran. The most recent was yesterday. I don't remember the other times Death and I went to the pond, but a year and a half ago, and then, eh five years ago? Is one thousand six hundred ninety-four days five years ago?"

"Four and quarter, roughly," North answers.

"So what," Tooth gave up reading the screen to search other parts of the room. "Every time you went to the pond, something on the Moon Clipper alerted us?"

"I think so."

"This means there's no one on this ship to save. It's just a computer program." Death sounds bitter.

"Oi! What about Sandy?" Bunny exclaims.

"He's a fearling host now. We can't save him."

"Look, shelia. You've been pretty negative. I'm sure there's some way –"

I tune out the discussion behind me and go back to the search results. Okay, so Manny told the ship to figure out if I was at the pond and then alert the Guardians. But why?

I skip the middle file and go to the last one. What opens is a page of text, starting with a gibberish date. After the first line, I know exactly what this is. Manny's diary.

_I have lived much longer than I expected. Maybe it's the star magic I was gifted, or something about the Moon, but regardless. I can feel death creeping closer._

_There's no world spirit on the Moon. There is no life here, and thus no need for a world spirit and its lower spirits to guard the cycle. This means, when I die, I will have no one to release me._

_It's true, I've created spirits before. Guardians of Childhood, to protect that which fascinates me so much on Earth. But they I created with Gaia's help and permission, and they're really offshoots of her that I've molded more than anything else._

_Here on the Moon, there's no world spirit to work with and my pool of star magic is so low I cannot get myself to Earth. I worry that when I die, my soul will stay trapped in my body and I'll become a fearling._

_The only way to prevent that, as I cannot get to Earth, is to bring Gaia's spirit aid for this to me. Death must come to the Moon Clipper and release my soul before it's too late. Alas, I cannot contact her. But I can contact my Guardians. I need a way to draw the two together, and a way to tell Death that I need her services. Just a grat ago, I saw a boy fall in a lake and drown. I think he may be the key._

I swallow. I'd guessed by this point that Manny _had_ created me, and while my lack of spirit status meant I couldn't be a Guardian it had been nice to imagine that maybe that's what he'd been trying to do. Make me one. That maybe I could have a life where kids didn’t see me as ‘Saint Jack Frost.’

This destroyed the fantasy. I'd been nothing but a three-way walkie-talkie. And a bad one at that; Death got to the Moon three hundred years too late.

"Jack?" Death gently leans against me. Her voice is low like she's used on the dying still awake when she joins me. "Are you okay? You look like you want to cry."

"I, I," I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. So what if I hadn't been what Manny made me. So what if Death got to the Moon too late to save Manny. It sucks, yeah, but what Manny did or didn't do still allowed me to live a second life that I really, really enjoy living.

I tilt my head so it rests on Death's shoulder. "Fine. Just found Manny's diary, I think."

"Anything interesting."

"Not what you're looking for," I answer, and suddenly I want the same information Death seeks. I can't thank Manny like I originally planned to. I can't change the past. But if we found out the spell, this star magic stuff, he used to make me, Death can do for me what she couldn't do for Manny. Prevent me from turning into a fearling.

I return to the search results. "Did find out what Manny wanted with the program through. He, he knew he was dying, Death. And he knew about fearlings. He was trying to get your attention, so you'd come here and release his soul."

Death stills and I realize the Guardians have stopped chatting too. They're listening in. I don't want them to, but I can't stop them and ultimately, they need to know this information as well. As much as I wish I could break this news to Death privately, it's easier if I only have to say things twice.

"Oh," Death says.

I've known her long enough I know how to read that sound. Death takes her job releasing souls very, very seriously. She'd never told me about fearlings before, but I knew there were consequences if she didn't work. Consequences so dire she put all she had into the job. She put up with other spirits not liking her, with the fear humans had of her and how that hurt her, the loneliness of the job before I came along, all because she knew how important her work was. Dedicated, that was Death. And to learn someone had wanted her, _needed_ her, and she hadn’t come?

This would haunt her.

"I thought," she swallows, "That maybe fearlings were an Earth thing and Manny didn't know about them, which is why he didn't meet up with Gaia again. But he's been asking for help for centuries."

Tooth buzzes up on Death's other side to lay a hand on her shoulder. "You didn't know. No one knew."

I don't say anything about how they had three hundred years to figure things out, only to come to the wrong conclusion. I click open the next diary entry. Like before, I can't make heads or tail of the date, but I can tell right away this is a later entry.

_My spell didn't work. I imbedded the last of my star magic and tied myself to the body of the boy in the lake. I had hoped that Death would come to release his soul, only for the Guardians to recognize my magic and sound the alarm. But none of that has come to pass. The boy remains in the lake. Death has not been called to his body. Perhaps the link of magic between us prevents her from finding him. Perhaps as I am still alive, Gaia reads the boy the same._

_Either way, there's a boy frozen in the lake, my magic is gone, and the moonbots tell me the spell has sapped the little strength I had._

_I need to accept my fate – I will turn into a fearling._

_The thought terrifies me. No one knows how long the transformation takes. If something can be done to delay it. Just in case, I'm trying to make my passing as easy as possible. I know I am old, I accepted my death a long time ago. I plan to die in the old bridge, a room I have along ago converted into my bedroom since my crash. There is nothing so soothing to me as laying on my bed and looking up to the stars. I have written a program to alert the Guardians when Death shows up at the lake. Perhaps she will do so the day I pass, and if the Guardians respond quickly enough and bring her, she can release my soul in time. And, as a last result, I have given the moonbots the order to destroy my body if Death does not come within a yorkis. The study of fearlings is small, the universe has been focused on preventing their birth, but if being trapped in a body causes them perhaps destroying mine will free my soul and prevent my turning._

_Comforts. Hopes._

_I cling to them and pray they work._

Death and the Guardians are talking, building something that sounds like a plan, but she stops talking when I grasp her jacket.

"He talks a little about the spell here," I explain.

"And?" Death asks.

"No details, but he used something he calls star magic. And said he put a bit of himself in, well, me."

"That'd explain you able to read things," Bunny says.

I ignore him to watch Death's face. She doesn't know star magic. She frowns at my chest. At my heart.

"There's more," I continue. "Manny, well, he _knew_ he was dying. Knew about fearlings. He had the moonbots destroy his body in an attempt to stop from turning.”

"Good to try," North says, "but did not work."

Death shrugged. "We've been planning based on that anyway. Though, knowing fearlings don’t need a full body to be formed is worth telling Gaia about. If we get home."

"This plan _will_ work," Tooth says. "Because if it doesn't, we don't really have a backup plan."

"We could break apart Sandy's ship," Death says. "We'd all become fearling hosts, but better us than all of Earth."

"Is Plan B," North says.

I stare at him. Because if that's really Plan B, self-sacrifice…

I'd do it. For the kids. Even if it meant my worst fears come true. Well, second worse fear. Being possessed by a fearling was slightly better than turning into one.

"Look," Bunny says, "There's no reason why it couldn't work, right? The biggest obstacle is what? Isolating a fearling?"

"You've obviously been talking without me, fill me in?"

Death crosses her arms. "We're going to try what I do with a new fearling, talk it down. As we all, uh, panicked, when surrounded by ten of them, the idea is to find a solo fearling, and then I pull the fearling out of the moonbot and comfort until it's not a fearling anymore."

"Assuming you can do that."

"Assuming I can do that."

"She _has_ to," Tooth insists again.

"We're hoping to play support," Bunny points between him and Tooth. "We're able to project our centers to children. Tooth helps them remember childhood memories. I give them hope. We've never done it for each other before, but it could be a weapon against fearlings."

I exchange a look with Death. Tooth is right. This plan, crazy as it is, _has_ to work because Plan B sucks and I suspect there is no Plan C.

I still think, and I can tell Death does too, that it won't.

"Come on, mates." Bunny reaches up to North's shoulder on his right and Death's on his left. "We can do this."

He looks so sincere. So hopeful. Maybe Guardian powers do work on spirits and magic-powered corpses.

"Okay," I say. "We have to at least try."

North opens his mouth, but before he can speak something hits the door to the room. We all freeze. It's not the _thunk thunk thunk_ of moonbots hitting it. The sound is soft, singular, and…in the pattern of 'shave and a haircut.'

"Sandy!" North hisses.

"Real Sandy or possessed Sandy?" I ask

"Have to open door to find out." He strides to the door. In a lucky guess, he slams the palm of his hand in the right spot to open it. The lights to outline the door appear, the seam cracks open. North stands tall, both swords gripped tightly in his hands.

There, floating on a small golden cloud, is a waving Sandy.


End file.
